New Moon Waltz
by Eulerian
Summary: Annerose x Oberstein. Some people will never be the sun.


There were few pictures of their mother, a camera shy doll who was unlucky enough to grow into beauty rather than be born with it. Their father had loved her long before her looks had matured and arguably, they never had -Caribelle von Musel had been an budding rose destined to never reach full bloom. By the time of her death, she had merely graduated from plain to attractive, a label that was offered only tentatively considering her two pregnancies. Born to rags and buried in rags, she had been an unfulfilled princess, one of those soft-hearts that cried out for a savior who never came. Annerose remembered her with love-laced pity, sorrow for the woman who had never truly managed to live but also frustration that she had been content to merely be the damsel of somebody else's story.

Reinhard cared little for Caribelle. He, of course, mourned the mother who died when he was young but only the idea of her, not the woman herself and her hopes and dreams -or rather, her lack of them. If he had, then Annerose preferred to believe that he would not adore her the way that he did, setting his dear sister higher up the golden pedestal on which she had lived her life. It was not his fault; he could not possibly know that the gilded cage of the Goldenbaum dynasty had been superfluous, that the addition of a second kind of bondage affected her not at all. She had even almost been happy, all desires muted under an onslaught of undeserved comfort and beautiful baubles.

Their father had often said that Annerose looked like their mother. Looking into the mirror, she was terrified to find it true. With every passing year, it became more obvious that Caribelle was filling the crevices of her life. Annerose had inherited more than her looks; she had inherited her role in the story as well. However, unlike her mother, Annerose had been "rescued" by not one but two knights: her brother and his best friend. She had wanted neither.

Of the two, Kircheis had been the one who teetered on the brink of recognizing that she did not need them. Annerose grieved for the loss of his kind insight, that her brother had dragged him to the frontlines where he died after she had entrusted that beautiful boy to him. He had treated her gently but it was the gentleness of courtesy, not self-imposed duty. If this were a story, she would mourn, too, for the loss of a great love. The truth, however, was that she had made her peace with it long ago. Billions died in war -she could not afford to be optimistic and think either of them would have survived. And, for all his prowess and ambitions, she still doubted whether or not Reinhard would ever be laid to rest in Odin's rich earth. For the younger brother who had loved her unconditionally, she feared that he would meet the same fate as the countless soldiers who had given up their lives and right to be retrieved and properly buried.

How she envied Magdalena, her strength and her wit! If she had been born a man, the entire empire would have been eating out of the palm of her hand. Where Magdalena went, so did the sun. Annerose herself was merely the moon, a poor, pale reflection of something bright and worthy. She was Caribelle -struck by one great tragedy before becoming the personification of it. That single event superposed itself over the rest of their lives.

Bitterly, Annerose thought that if Reinhard had really loved her at all, he would have come to see her despite her expressed wish that he not. His brotherly duty done, however, he had left her to fade in the shadows, forgotten. When the curtain fell, that was the common ending of a fairytale.

She retreated to the estate that the Kaiser had previously granted her, learning to turn the cage into the garden of her life. With a critical eye, she went through the entourage of servants that were part of the furniture and dismissed them until only a handful remained. The rest, she sent to her brother, pettily letting it become his problem. Then, she she packed away her long, flowing gowns and dug up the more practical knee-high skirts and sleeveless blouses she had once worn in her youth. Thirty years of existence loomed in the distance but more than ever, she felt like the girl who played dress-up with her mother's scarves and laughed as she helped her baby brother take his first steps.

There was little work to be done on the estate: that was why Annerose took it upon herself to reinvent the entire property. The flowerbeds were to be torn out and replaced with different flora and patterns, the fountains were to be moved. There would be walls knocked down, walls built up, and stairs leading to a yet-to-be-made observation deck on the roof.

In the first week, she dug up the flowers and plotted where the new ones would rest. There would be no roses, the Kaiser's favorite, in this garden. Roses were beautiful, deceivingly dangerous things that existed to be devoured in little rosewater cakes or decapitated for the sake of a single evening's accessory. She planted practical greenery instead - sunflowers where the roses were, tomato plants were there had once been azaleas, and carrots to mark the divides between different species. Refusing the help of her servants for anything more than transporting the little plants, the work was hard and lonely. Like the garden sprouting at her hands, she was alive.

When the gardens were finished, Annerose took a day off to bask in the satisfaction of personal was then she remembered that Magdalena had moved off planet to assist with the reconstruction of planets which had been damaged during Alliance occupation. With nobody to share her accomplishments with, she idly deliberated whether or not to ring her brother and ultimately decided not to. He was prime minister now and kaiser in all but name; he needed no permission from anybody to come calling. Instead, she inquired about the number of a certain admiral to whom she felt she owed a belated favor and waited.

At noon the next day, His Excellency Vice Admiral Oberstein appeared promptly at her doorstep. She showed him in with little fanfare, seating them both in a blue drawing room she intended to paint green. The cost of the tea she served could have fed a peasant family for a year -it was a leftover gift from noble looking to get deeper into the previous Kaiser's favor. Neither of them touched it. As the liquid cooled, she started to knit at blanket of soft, fluffy wool and they spoke of ordinary things that she could have learned herself from a newspaper. The vice admiral asked her eventually why she had called for him. Because she, too, could be as obstructive as he, Annerose gave him an open invitation to visit and let him on his way.

A month later, with no sign of Oberstein, the garden was in bloom. Pollen from the newly planted fruit trees weighed down the air stickily. It was a bad time to have decided to repaint the rooms but that was just what Annerose did, opening every window in the estate to let the walls air. Having never done a project of this scale before, the first layers of paint were ugly and filled with bubbles, spilling over the edges of the rooms and onto the ground and ceiling. She learned quickly that, even with an apron on, she had best wear clothes which would not be missed.

Three days into her painting project, Annerose fell off of a ladder and broke her wrist. Under the pain and tears, she was mainly surprised. It was the first time she had ever broken a bone but not the first she had tried to take care of a break. This was what Reinhard's childhood was like, she realized a little later. Full of bruises and broken bones, most received on her behalf for being the Kaiser's whore. More and more, she felt as if she were an actual person, the needle of reality violating her stagnant, cushioned life. Thoughtfully, she refused the help of a doctor, wrapped up her wrist, and continued painting. She was halfway done repainting the blue-now-mostly-green drawing room when a frantic servant poured in through the doorway. At his heels, Oberstein gave the entire room an impassive once-over, his gaze settling briefly on her injured wrist.

Annerose offered him vegetables from her garden -which he declined- and, in a fit of rebellion, insisted that he stay for dinner. The affair could have taken place in a graveyard for all the deep silence which permeated the table. She asked nothing of her brother and he did not offer. As before, she took up her knitting in between the last course and dessert. The severity was broken only once she had shown him to the door. He took one step forward and then paused, his back towards her.

When he spoke, his voice was flat. "I killed Admiral Kircheis," he said, and disappeared into the darkness before she could respond.

That night, she lay in her night dress on a comfortable couch, staring at the freshly painted ceiling and thinking about his words. "I killed Admiral Kircheis", he had said. Annerose wondered if his veneer of cruelty was just as obvious to the rest of the admiralty. Blanketed by the shadows, she mouthed two responses she could have given him and felt no pang of regret.

A doctor came for her the very next morning. She wondered.

Slowly, the rooms came alive with all the colors of the rainbow. She had abandoned the premise of painting entire rooms the same color and decided to simply paint each wall on its own. The drawing room sported one wall of its original sapphire blue, one of green, and two opposing walls of warm brown-red, the color of familiar eyes. It was only then she wrote the message she had been thinking of for the last few days, scripting it with an elegant, curling hand that looked more like art than writing.

"I do not care," she wrote, and sent it as it was, unsigned. That she did not receive a reply bothered her not at all. Annerose was a patient woman.

Despite her patience, however, she broke her schedule out of sheer curiosity. "I am going out this afternoon," she announced to her maid, a mousy girl with quick eyes but a slow tongue. "Alone." A warmth spread through her at the words, as well as a thrill of excitement. It had been years since she had taken a look around the city in person, longer since she had the freedom to spontaneously decide just to go. When she had prepared herself, however, she found a contingent of soldiers standing at attention in the courtyard.

"I could hardly take all of you with me," she said to the crowd. "Please tell your commanding officer to come here. I will talk to him about it." In the meantime, she put a strawberry and rhubarb pie in the oven. Within an hour, Oberstein himself emerged from a car, just as the Annerose was taking out the pastry and setting out it to cool.

"Oh good, you are just on time," she said, herding him to the kitchen before he could protest. Though she had to force it, there was soon a plate in his hand with a heavy, steaming slice of pie. For a moment, she regretted not having the foresight to prepare cream with it. "After setting spies up in my household, the least you can do for me is try my cooking."

He stared at her impassively. "Your safety is of the utmost priority," he drawled. "The Kaiser would be distraught if you were to come to harm and as is, you are a major target for his enemies. It would be unwise for me to ignore such a danger." But, under her serene gaze, he did take a tiny piece of pie.

"Very well," she said calmly. "If you are volunteering your services as my guard for the day, then I will have to accept." The resulting look on his face, the barest flicker of protest running across it gave her great joy.

Two hours later, she was wandering her old grounds, greeting the faces she recognized and introducing herself to the ones that she did not. Oberstein hovered at her elbow like a shadow, dressed in civilian wear for once to avoid attention. It was specifically because he sought to avoid attention that she put her arm through his and physically forced him to her side. In the back of her mind, she thought of her parents, her father constantly trailing her mother out of old-fashioned chivalry, something that had made Caribelle blush prettily with happiness. Annerose remembered being told that one day, she would find a love to fill the same scenario, being simultaneously higher than any virtue a man could aspire to but also lower in status by every measure. Serenely, she smiled at his stoicism, taking note of the brief moment when his eyes widened ever so slightly. At the end of the day, she led him right back to the kitchen and wrapped up half the pie for him to take home.

"You gain nothing from this." Oberstein told her, the next time she saw him. He stood right at the boundary of the estate, watching as she wrestled with the weeds.

Even with a generously wide-brimmed hat on, she could feel her skin overheated by the sun. "Explain," she said, wiping the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief.

"I am useful to your brother," he said. "I am useless to you."

She considered him for a moment, eyes running up and down his still form. There was more grey in his dark hair than she last remembered. "I hope my brother does not work you too hard."

"The Empire must come first," he said. "It does not matter what happens to me."

Annerose looked at the weed in her hand. It was a small, white flower, blooming in the wrong place at the wrong time. Feeling daring, she stood to her full height and, swaying forward, kissed him gently on the side of the mouth. Under her lips, she felt him shift uneasily.

"Then we are the same," she declared after drawing away. His facade had broken; there was a faint expression of alarm splattered across his face. "Because I have already fulfilled my purpose, have I not?" The admiral said nothing more and after a while, she heard the sound of his footsteps slowly recede into the distance.

It came to her shortly after that she had read this story before, both of theirs. She was the princess and he, perhaps, the villain of a tale whose scale of morality hinged solely on might. "I do not care" she repeated to herself silently. In her bones, Caribelle slumbered.


End file.
